DIY Ant Bait Station

Three simple ingredients; no synthetic pesticides. Works even better than commercial traps!

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
½ cup warm water
1 tablespoon borax

Instructions
Dissolve sugar and borax in warm water in a jar. Label jar and store away from kids and pets. (See pictures at the bottom of this page for exemplary jar and label).

Pour 1-2 tablespoons of the solution in an old lid, a foil “boat,” or any other shallow container; even a bottle cap can do the trick! Set the bait station near the ants’ point of entry and leave undisturbed. (See pictures at the bottom of this page for exemplary stations and placements.)

Ideally, before you set the bait station, clear the area of clutter and wipe down with soap and water to clear old pheromone trails—this way, ants go straight to the bait station and back to the nest, with limited wandering. If the bait station is near a food prep area, wipe down counters with soap and water before prepping food in order to remove any residue left behind by the ants.

We always get ants in the springtime, mainly in our kitchen at cracks in the windowsill. I experimented with many synthetic-pesticide-free solutions before settling on the one above. Here is a rundown of what I tried, and how I landed here.

First, I tried repellants, like essential oils, because my goal isn’t to kill the ants; my goal is to get them off my kitchen counters. But the repellants simply drove the ants to enter at other rooms in the house, which created a bigger headache than I had initially.

A few failed attempts later, and now with ants in multiple rooms in the house, I resorted to Terro bait stations. The active ingredient is borax, and although I do not use borax, generally, I am fine with using it for this limited purpose as an alternative to synthetic pesticides. But I was always skeptical of Terro’s failure to disclose all of its inactive ingredients—a common place for harmful ingredients to hide—especially because I knew the product was being tracked across my kitchen counters. I also dislike the single-use plastic containers used for the Terro bait stations.

So I kept looking for alternatives, and I eventually settled on this recipe to make my own bait stations. It is so easy, and I have found this DIY version to be even more effective than the Terro product—I think because the sugar water is totally open, which attracts the ants more quickly and expedites the whole process. I’ve had the problem resolved in as little as 24 hours, although I usually leave the station out for a week or so.

A little of this solution goes a long way, and it seems to have a long shelf life. As anecdotal evidence, one batch stored fine for over two years for me.

It never feels good to kill one of God’s creatures, but I take comfort in the fact that this is a very targeted approach using simple ingredients in small quantities, and it thus has minimal peripheral impact on the ecosystem in which we exist.